HOOD COUNTY EXPRESS | THE FLOCK FILES

Canadian creator Anthony Sistilli says Peel Regional Police visited after he posted short videos demonstrating a homemade plate reader aimed at police vehicles. He told Straight Arrow News that officers asked about his intentions, including whether he planned to map police movements, and raised safety concerns.

IN THIS STORY: The Ontario experiment, access to Texas camera records, Flock's announced safeguards and two different court rulings.

THE EXPERIMENT

In that interview, he described a camera, laptop, machine-learning software and phone GPS that logged plates after classifying vehicles as likely police cars. Records paired plates with photographs, times and locations, he said.

He said his Brampton, Ontario, test recorded two of five police cars in one hour, and dated the visit to September 20.

He described transparency as his goal and said he does not condone talk online of violence against officers.

The Straight Arrow report did not include a response from Peel Regional Police.

WHAT THE COMMERCIAL SYSTEM DOES

Flock describes its license plate readers as cameras that capture plates and vehicle details such as make, color and body type. Its product page markets the information as a way to find stolen vehicles, locate missing people and develop investigative leads. The company says customers can share vehicle evidence with authorized law enforcement across jurisdictions.

A TEXAS ACCESS QUESTION

The Texas Tribune reported September 4 that more than 2,800 agencies had searched the Texas Department of Public Safety's Flock network without agreements DPS had previously described as necessary. Its analysis examined roughly 615,000 searches in June.

DPS told the Tribune that agencies without agreements had been able to search specific, complete plate numbers. It said it would limit all searches to agencies with signed agreements. In an October 5 follow-up, the Tribune reported that DPS had reduced the number of agencies allowed access. That report did not establish complete compliance with the new limits.

The Tribune's September finding concerned access agreements; it was not a finding that every search was unlawful.

WHAT FLOCK SAYS IT IS CHANGING

In an August 13 statement, Flock announced a seven-day recommended and default retention period. Its September clarification said the new default applies only to new law-enforcement customers. Existing customers keep their established settings, the company said; private-sector accounts retain their existing terms. The change therefore does not mean all Flock records disappear after a week.

Flock also said it would require law-enforcement customers to use its Audit Assistance feature and enter case codes for searches by year's end. Flock said emergency searches could bypass the case-code requirement but would be flagged for administrator review. It described plans to suspend access when activity met abnormal-behavior criteria, pending an administrator's review. These were announced safeguards and deadlines, not proof that every agency had already implemented them.

The company also said officers should visually confirm a plate and check that a stop complies with law and agency policy before acting on an alert.

DIFFERENT SEARCHES, DIFFERENT RULINGS

In United States v. Porter on March 17, the Fifth Circuit held that the plate-reader use before it did not require a warrant. The opinion described periodic vehicle sightings at about ten camera locations in Gautier, Mississippi, and distinguished that information from more comprehensive location tracking.

In United States v. Kyle on October 1, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma reached a different result involving a historical query. The order described more than 50 sightings across multiple states over a month and found the warrantless search violated the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights. The judge suppressed the resulting evidence.

Those decisions arose from different records in different courts. Porter also discussed historical records, but emphasized the system's limited local coverage. The rulings do not establish one answer for every plate-reader search.

THE QUESTIONS TO ASK

For readers evaluating a camera program, the reporting raises practical questions: Who can search it? How long are records kept? What justification must a user enter? Who reviews questionable searches?

Hood County Express — Est’d 1/26 🚂
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